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Toys cover the inside of a County of Lackawanna Transit System trolley at the end of the agency’s annual “Stuff the Bus” drive last year.

Gretchen Wintermantel tried food and settled on toys.

As the County of Lackawanna Transit System’s “Stuff the Bus” toy and book drive turns 8 years, Wintermantel, the agency’s spokeswoman, said she focused the first one, in 2009, on attracting food donations. With so many other competing food drives during the holidays, that didn’t work out too well, she said.

Back then, Stuff the Bus happened before Thanksgiving.

“It competed with Feed-A-Friend,” Wintermantel said, referring to United Neighborhood Center’s annual Thanksgiving food drive. “I think it was too much ... There’s a lot of food drives and it didn’t turn out to stuff the bus. The next year, reflecting on it, (I was) thinking, well, children. Obviously, the need is there, so we contacted Toys for Tots.”

The drive benefits the Marine Corps Reserve’s Toys for Tots program.

Stuff the Bus refers to trying to fill a COLTS’ trolley — decorated as Holly the Trolley for the day — with donated toys and books.

In seven years, Stuff the Bus has collected more than 4,000 toys and raised $5,000, Wintermantel said.

“Last year, we collected $931.52 and 399 toys,” she said.

COLTS used to stage Stuff the Bus on Courthouse Square but moved the event to its Lackawanna Transit Center at 100 Lackawanna Ave. when it opened.

Donors may bring unwrapped, new toys or new books or cash donations to the transit center on Dec. 7 from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. The agency and the Marines will also have a stand on the Spruce Street side of Courthouse Square between 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Rock 107’s Eric Logan, “The Prospector,” will broadcast live from 7 to 10 a.m. and Rock 107’s Hoover will go live from 3 to 6 p.m. Rock 107 and the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 168, which represents COLTS employees, co-sponsor the event.

Wintermantel hopes for better weather than in past years.

“We’ve had rain, we’ve had snow, we’ve had freezing, freezing temperatures,” she said. “But people are very generous.”

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